Forward Looking Statements

UPDATE: We won!! The Best of Citrix Synergy 2019 Award for Storage, Networking and Infrastructure goes to Forward Networks!
DAY ONE AT CITRIX SYNERGY was off the charts.
We have broken all previous records on the number of visitors to our booth (409) with lines of people longer than we’ve…

Last month we introduced our Network Query Engine (NQE) at Cisco Live Europe and to a very impressive technical audience as part of Tech Field Day 2019. If you didn’t have the chance to read through our introduction blog, NQE leverages the internal network data model that Forward Networks builds…

Last week, on February 8, 2019, Packet Pushers published our second podcast with them covering a range of customer use case updates and new features like our Network Query Engine (NQE), VMware NSX support, Cisco ACI announcement and more. We have always gotten great feedback on our shows with hosts…

There is a wealth of untapped information in your network. Learn to query and extract it!
Even before packets start flowing, enterprise networks are complex, data-intensive repositories of topology, configuration and state information. This information is often required to solve operational…

What’s been the biggest change to networking in the past decade? While there have been tremendous improvements in automation, capacity and mobility, nothing has had a greater impact on IT organizations than cloud migration. We all know the business drivers behind this evolution, from cost…

On October 31, 2018, Cisco released a security advisory for its ASA and Firepower threat defense software regarding a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability. The full security advisory can be found here. The summary (below) notes that the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) inspection engine could…

In tech terms, a diff is a listing of changes or differences between documents, files, source code, etc. As a Unix command, it became a common method of distributing patches and source updates, or just comparing versions of text files. Diffs became so easy to do and use, and common to so many use…

The great panacea for network IT the last several years has been more and more automation. Automation through orchestration. Simplifying and accelerating network administration tasks at the scale of large enterprise and cloud networks. Automation to keep up with the accelerated deployment of…

A new feature in Forward Enterprise now allows customers to simplify the analysis of network access issues between the network and security teams. We call this feature ACL-less analysis, or permit-all mode. First some context why multiple customers asked us to develop this feature, and the use case…

We were very excited to be selected as a Gartner Cool Vendor in Enterprise Networking for 2018 according to their report (download now) released on May 7. We believe this recognition reflects the innovations we've made around intent-based networking, network operations and IT automation over the…

In agile network operations, network configurations need to be updated to reflect new application or policy requirements, or to implement a change in network behavior. As business and application requirements change, we have to translate new policies into specific network configuration changes in…

Yesterday, Brandon Heller and I recorded a podcast with Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro of Packet Pushers fame. If you are not a fan of Packet Pusher Podcasts, you should be. They have a large following of highly technical network nerds and their podcasts are always engaging and educational. When they…

Back in October, our co-founder Nikhil Handigol presented at the Open Networking User Group (ONUG) meeting in New York on how Forward Enterprise helps accelerate and de-risk network operations.
Click on the image below to launch the video on vimeo.com:
ONUG was created in early 2012 by Nick…

Monday morning this week, Internet access in many areas across the U.S. were severely compromised and routes through several carriers reported problems. Although remediation was fast (about 90 minutes), a simple router misconfiguration in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) set-up through one of the…

In Part 1 of this blog, I discussed the power of network verification compared to traditional network testing. Verification is the mathematical and logical analysis of your current network configurations and state to detect and highlight violations of your policies and intent. Verification can take…

The more networks have evolved and the more complex data center architectures have become, more and more organizations are realizing they've got time bombs latent in their network, just waiting for the right set of circumstances to take down critical portions of their infrastructure. In the past, a…

The following post is from Forward Networks new Vice President of Global Sales, Ryan Mac Ban, and previously posted on LinkedIn under the title "Why Forward Networks and Why Now?"
If you are reading this, you most likely know that I have recently joined Forward Networks to run Global Sales. My…

How to use an army of tests to understand and diagnose your network!
You’ve probably heard about how hard it is to operate networks. The complexity of the devices, the diversity of protocols operating simultaneously, and the sheer size of the network are all well-known reasons for getting…

Since making our platform available, many of the world’s largest banks, telcos, and IT companies have come to rely on Forward Networks to keep their networks healthy and operated efficiently. From the CTO to a junior engineer, people quickly grasp the value of what the Forward Platform can deliver,…

The network lies at the heart of a modern enterprise’s ability to perform its daily business and operations. When a network outage occurs, due to a policy misconfiguration or a device failure, business grinds to a halt. Almost every week, it seems, we read a new headline where a Fortune 500 company…

As part of Forward Networks’ public launch, we had the privilege of presenting to a lively delegation at Networking Field Day 13 on November 17th, 2016. The event took place at Andreessen Horowitz’ campus in Menlo Park, CA and constituted our first public unveiling of the Forward Platform. The idea…

Networks today are integral to many if not all aspects of our lives. A multitude of data packets whizz by on wired or wireless networks enabling us to carry out both our personal and business lives in the digital world. It is therefore easy to understand the chaos that is caused when these networks…

After years of work, we’re proud to leave stealth today and officially unveil Forward Networks.
Our Background
My three co-founders: Brandon Heller, Nikhil Handigol, Peyman Kazemian and I were fortunate to be members of the team that created Software Defined Networking while working on our PhDs at…